It is now a common objective in IP networks to provide the option of a guaranteed QoS (quality of service). See for example, 1) “Quality of service in ATM networks: State-of-the-art Traffic Management”, Natalie Giroux, Sudhakar Ganti, 1999 by Prentice-Hall PTR, pages 38-46 and 61; 2) “Specification of Guaranteed Quality of Service”, Shenker, et al, RFC 2212, Standards Track, September 1997, pages 1 to 20; and 3) “An Architecture for Differentiated Services”, Blake, et al, RFC 2475, Information al, December 1998, pages 1 to 36.
Associated with QoS delivery is the concept of traffic “policing”, (also synonymous with “marking” or “metering”) whereby a service provider ensures that at the same time a customer is receiving the QoS paid for, they are not in certain respects exceeding that QoS.
Referring now to FIG. 1, shown is an example of a customer's traffic source 10 generating traffic 14 which is sent to a network 12 through a connection 15. During the setup of such a connection 15, typically the customer has requested/negotiated certain traffic parameters for the traffic 14, such as bandwidth, delay etc., and pays for the connection accordingly. The network 12 has a policing node 16 at which the traffic 14 is policed in accordance with the negotiated parameters. Typically the policing node 16 is the first point of access within the network 12 for the traffic 14.
The policing node 16 has a policer (synonymous with “meter” or “marker”) 18 responsible for marking packets which constitute traffic 14 as either conforming, non-conforming, or partially conforming. The policer 18 is typically implemented using a leaky bucket mechanism. Each time a packet of traffic 14 arrives, a bucket is filled by a number of policing units, or tokens, corresponding to an allowed burst of data. The bucket continuously leaks tokens at a rate reflective of the bandwidth or rate to be provided. In the event the bucket overflows, packets are marked as non-conforming. Packets which arrive while the bucket is not overflowing are marked as conforming. Typically, allowances are made by the policer 18 to realize both an average rate (sometimes referred to as the committed information rate or CIR), and a burst tolerance (BT). Burst tolerance can be provided for example by allowing the bucket to accumulate up to the maximum token bucket size. This allows packets to be transmitted at a rate greater than the average for a short period of time.
Existing policing algorithms are designed to police a single traffic flow to a single set of negotiated specifications. When there are multiple traffic flows from a single customer, multiple independent policers have been employed.